Nov 2012 – Leaf free lawn

LEAF FREE LAWN

Its that time again. Wind, rain, leaves falling and covering your lawn in brown slimy piles. Now, the received wisdom is that you have to spend time raking them all up, otherwise your lawn will turn yellow, get mossy, start dying. All of which is actually true, you cant just leave them there. However, life is just too short to spend hours raking.

So here’s this month’s time-saving tip:

– get your lawnmower out, ideally its one with a box that collects the grass clippings (this will still work if not, but not as well)
– check that its on the highest setting (if you don’t know how to do that, don’t worry, just use it however you normally do)
– now just cut your grass, a little more slowly than usual
– if the grass is a bit wet, its not a problem, as long as it isn’t actually raining when you are mowing
– your mower will chop up and collect up nearly all the leaves as you go, with no extra effort needed by you
– if you have a hover mower, that’s great, it will blow away any leaves it doesn’t pick up
– then just empty the leaves and grass clippings into your compost bin or garden recycling.Job done.Do this a couple of times this autumn and not only will your lawn look a lot better, your garden will look neat and tidy too. If you didnt already give your lawn an autumn feed, its a bit late but you still can, so just spend a few minutes scattering some granular lawn food over it (or see my earlier post about autumn lawn care for more details).

By the way, I never bother to pick up leaves that fall on the flower borders. You can if you like but they are good for the soil as they rot down over winter. So that’s saved another hour or so of toil !